Freedom Line Blog

As The Weekly Standard reports, polls now show Rick Santorum has a chance to do very well indeed in three different contest on Tuesday. If he does, it should become a two-man race between him and Romney. If he doesn’t, Romney is home free, I believe.
But there’s the deal: Rasmussen now has Santorum as the only Republican running who beats Obama head to head. It just goes to show that, over time, Santorum wears well with voters.

The question is, why have so many conservative leaders been so unwilling to rally around him? Why haven’t more of them endorsed him? (That said, in the past week some brave souls have started what Santorum must hope will turn into a stampede: Michelle Malkin, Tom Tancredo, Jane Norton, Bob Schaffer, David Limbaugh, Phyllis Schafly, Pat Boone.)

If they don’t like Romney, and they get stuck with him, they have only themselves to blame.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Hillyer:  Reagan 101
Ellis:  Direct-Pay Medicine: A Free Market Approach to Healthcare Reform
Lee:  Obama, Three Years Ago This Week: “If I Don’t Have This Turned Around in Three Years…”
Senik:  The “Republican Establishment” Rides Again
Release:  Conservative Leaders Call On President, Congress To Pass Corporate Tax Reform

Podcast:  The Consequences of Pres. Obama’s Refusal to Approve Keystone XL Pipeline
Jester’s Courtroom:  Lawyers Win Big in iLawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

Today’s Department of Labor report that unemployment declined slightly from 8.5% to 8.3% in January will surely be celebrated and trumpeted by the Obama Administration.  Which only serves to illustrate the terrible quality of his economic performance in office.

First of all, today’s announcement means that unemployment has now exceeded 8% for 36 consecutive months, three entire years.  That’s an all-time record since recordkeeping began.  Second, that new record is not somehow a reflection of the fact that the most recent recession was “the worst since the Great Depression,” as Obama and his apologists constantly claim.  Unemployment actually reached a higher peak in the early 1980s recession, but quickly plummeted from 10.8% to 6.7% following implementation of Reagan’s tax cuts.  In contrast, unemployment has increased under Obama from 7.8% to over 10% and three straight years over 8%.  Moreover, inflation and interest rates were far higher in the early 1980s recession, and monetary policy was much tighter, meaning that conditions were less hospitable for economic improvement.  Third, for all of the deficit spending the Obama Administration heaped upon American taxpayers, it promised that unemployment under its agenda would be down to around 6% by now.

Instead, we’re barely treading water and mediocre news is characterized as wonderful.  This is the Age of Obama.

CFIF Contributing Editor Ashton Ellis discusses how President Obama’s decision to block the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline will cost Americans roughly 20,000 new jobs and 700,000 barrels of oil a day, and how the decision ultimately could benefit China at the expense of the U.S.

Listen to the interview here.

In the ongoing battle over Congressional legislation to target foreign rogue websites, opponents falsely characterize the battle as one pitting sinister liberal “Big Hollywood” against underdog champions of Internet freedom.

That characterization was always false, but too many conservatives and libertarians unfortunately fell for it.  The truth is that hundreds of businesses and employers, from the NFL to EA Sports to Ford Motor to 1-800-Contacts to Burberry supported the bill.  Why?  Because their property, employees and innovations actually suffer from the menace of online piracy.  Meanwhile, groups like Google have no property right at stake from online piracy.  Indeed, they benefit from uninterrupted rogue website traffic.  So no wonder they opposed anti-piracy legislation.

Today, just days before the Super Bowl, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency announced a major bust of 307 rogue websites selling millions of dollars’-worth of counterfeit merchandise:

Special agents this week seized a total of 307 websites and snatched up 42,692 items of phony Super Bowl-related memorabilia along with other counterfeit items for a total take of more than $4.8 million – up from $3.72 million last year.  Sixteen of the sites the agency shut down during this operation known as Fake Sweep, were illegally streaming live sporting telecasts over the Internet, including NFL games.  Two hundred ninety-one website domain names were illegally selling and distributing counterfeit merchandise, ICE stated.”

And the bust wasn’t limited to counterfeit NFL merchandise:

During this operation, an additional 22,570 items of counterfeit merchandise and clothing representing other sports leagues, including Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League were seized by law enforcement. In total, this operation netted 65,262 counterfeit items worth $6.4 million, ICE stated.”

This is a critical example to keep in mind as the battle against foreign rogue websites moves forward.  That sort of illegal activity is already subject to seizure if it occurs within the U.S., but foreign sites remain largely beyond American law.  Piracy apologists want to make this look like anti-piracy legislation is just some sort of Big Hollywood handout, but this bust illustrates the falsity of that claim.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

On the heels of telling CNN this morning that he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” Politico provides a handy list of Mitt Romney’s growing number of devastating pronouncements this primary season:

1. “Corporations are people, my friend.” — Aug. 11, 2011, to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair.

2. “I like being able to fire people.” – Jan. 9, 2012, while speaking about holding insurance service providers accountable.

3. “I should tell my story. I’m also unemployed.” — June 16, 2011, after listening to a group of unemployed Floridians talk about their difficulties find a job.

4. “I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re going to get fired. There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip.” – Jan. 8, 2012, speaking at a rally about sharing the anxiety of workers worried about losing their jobs.

5. “Rick, I’ll tell you what — ten thousand bucks? Ten thousand dollar bet?” — Dec. 10, 2011, to Rick Perry during a presidential debate trying to settle a dispute about health insurance.

If Romney wins the GOP presidential nomination, expect to see these statements (and probably others!) run ad nauseum by Barack Obama’s campaign team.

Over at RealClearMarkets, the American Enterprise Institute’s Kenneth Green has a wonderful take-down of California’s delusional alternative energy mandate, which would “require that 15.4 percent of all vehicles sold by 2025 must be electric cars, plug-in hybrid cars, or (currently non-existent) fuel cell cars.” Green notes that this is the second time the Golden State has gone down this road, after a similar mandate — imposed back in 1990 — had to be scrapped due to its total infeasibility.

As you may recall, it used to be fashionable amongst conspiracy-minded greens to posit that the electric car had been undermined by some nefarious cabal of big oil, the auto industry, and hydrogen fuel cell advocates. They even made a film about it: 2006’s “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, which included the contributions of such noted experts in transportation economics as Martin Sheen, Mel Gibson, and Phyllis Diller. As Green points out, however, the electric car and its alternative fuel cousins have never taken the market by storm for a much simpler reason — they’re just not economically viable:

The GM Volt sells for a non-competitive $40,000, and is barely selling despite federal tax subsidies up to $7,500, and some state subsidies that further sweeten the pot. Plug-in hybrid technology is more expensive to manufacture, more expensive to repair, more expensive to insure, and, after 22 years, they still have overheating and fire problems.

As Robert Bryce points out in his book Power Hungry, electric cars are the “Next Big Thing. And they always will be.” Bryce observes that EV-boosters have been flogging electric cars since 1911, when the New York Times declared that “the electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal solution” because it “is cleaner and quieter” and “much more economical.”

Scan the hard data on any alternative energy source being promoted as a panacea and you’ll find much the same thing: Too little performance for too much money and too little convenience. And that’s the real tragedy of mandates like California’s or federal handouts to firms like Solyndra. The reality is that we probably will shift away from our reliance on conventional sources of energy like coal and oil in the future. But in order to do so, alternative energy sources will have to be scalable, affordable, and efficient. Providing subsidies for those technologies before they reach that point only delays their viability by reducing the financial incentive to get a better product to market.

The upshot? Reliable green energy may indeed be on the horizon for California. But if it does arrive, it will be because of the efforts of businessmen, not bureaucrats.

Ashton’s column today on direct-pay medicine is superb. Combine it with an expansion of the health savings accounts that Rick Santorum fought for during a 12-year span and helped authorize in 2003, and with allowing sales of health insurance across state lines, and with competition throughout Medicare rather than just in Part D, and with block grants to states for Medicaid so the states themselves will have freedom and incentive to promote market competition and efficiencies…. and, pretty soon, we would be well on our way to a thriving, multi-layered, market-based health-care financing system in which people would have all sorts of viable options. (Other ideas for free-market approaches for health care as a whole also abound.) It’s a shame President GW Bush never made such things a priority while he had House and Senate majorities. If somehow the American people (or the Supreme Court, in effect) can force the repeal of Obamacare, we’ll finally have the chance to put such ideas into play. As Ashton wrote, “there is a need for reform that opens up the healthcare industry to a lower-cost, transparent pricing system.”

Hear, hear!

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, was on Capitol Hill earlier today to brief lawmakers on the biggest national security threats facing the nation in the year ahead. While there was some good news (Al Qaeda, for instance, has been substantially weakened by the death of Osama bin Laden and many of its other senior leaders), Clapper’s warnings about Iran were ominous. As the Washington Post reports it:

In a letter (pdf) to California legislators, State Controller John Chiang summarizes the Golden State’s fiscal problems with deft understatement:

As of December 31, 2011, total receipts are coming in $2.6 billion less than forecasted, and expenditures are $2.6 billion more than assumed.  Together, both of these components translate into a $5.2 billion reduction in cash resources.

At least someone in California can still do math.  Will it matter?

In today’s world of crushing deficits and bureaucratic overreach, government has no business venturing into the world of operating communications networks.  That sort of adventurism merely competes with private investment dollars and creates even more debt for which struggling taxpayers are ultimately liable.

Broadband expansion itself is obviously a good thing, but the history of public broadband is simply one of failure.  The city of Marietta, Georgia provides just another example.

In 1996, Marietta entered the marketplace as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Predictably, the city struggled to keep pace with rapidly-changing technology and developments in the broadband arena. Eight years later, the city realized the effort was lost, so it sold its broadband network, FiberNet, for $11.2 million.  Unfortunately, that boondoggle meant a huge loss for Marietta taxpayers: the city had sunk $35 million into FiberNet before unloading it.

Marietta’s experience is far from isolated.  As I pointed out in testimony last year to the North Carolina legislature, from Taiwan to Sydney and Houston, Texas to Burlington, Vermont, recent history is rife with public broadband network failures.  North Carolina lawmakers wisely approved legislation placing additional requirements on cities and municipalities entering the broadband market.  Elsewhere, however, government-owned networks (GONs) continue to place taxpayers at great risk, stifling private sector investment and job creation and paradoxically causing fewer Americans to have access to broadband.

Because they are at such risk of failure, GONs also receive tax and regulatory advantages by the governments that ultimately build and operate them.  That is not only unfair, it’s highly destructive.  It discourages private owners from expanding their networks and bringing jobs to an area.  Furthermore, GONs have a particularly damaging effect on rural broadband access.  After all, private investors are less likely to risk precious capital in areas where they will have to compete directly with the government, not to mention compete on a tilted playing field.  That leaves consumers with fewer choices – the public network – for broadband.  And when the public network fails like the one in Marietta did – and like most do – these consumers are left with a big bill and diminished broadband.

Fortunately, some leaders recognize the problem and take action.  Georgia State Senator Chip Rogers  recently introduced legislation (SB 313) that would make Georgia cities and politicians answer the tough questions before betting millions of taxpayer dollars on costly broadband networks.  The legislation would require cities and municipalities to hold hearings on proposed GONs, and then put their plans to an actual vote.  Those requirements seem more than fair considering that public broadband networks have failed virtually everywhere they’ve been attempted.  Indeed, taxpayers and consumers would be best served if cities and municipalities stayed out of the broadband market altogether.  Nonetheless, we applaud Sen. Rogers and call on his colleagues to swiftly pass the legislation he has introduced.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Unbelievable. From the Daily Caller:

Concerned that too many “deniers” are in the meteorology business, global warming activists this month launched a campaign to recruit local weathermen to hop aboard the alarmism bandwagon and expose those who are not fully convinced that the world is facing man-made doom.

The Forecast the Facts campaign — led by 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters and the Citizen Engagement Lab — is pushing for more of a focus on global warming in weather forecasts, and is highlighting the many meteorologists who do not share their beliefs.

“Our goal is nothing short of changing how the entire profession of meteorology tackles the issue of climate change,” the group explains on their website. “We’ll empower everyday people to make sure meteorologists understand that their viewers are counting on them to get this story right, and that those who continue to shirk their professional responsibility will be held accountable.”

Another weekend, another document dump from Eric Holder regarding Fast and Furious.  Last Friday Holder’s Justice Department released information about 500 emails that show Holder knew about Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder on the day Terry died.  Other emails indicate Holder was aware of the botched gun-tracking program’s connection to Terry’s death.  Per Michael Walsh at the New York Post:

That information came in a series of e-mails in which the former US attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, discussed the F&F’s first fatality, agent Brian Terry, with a Holder deputy. The e-mails were sent in the early hours of Dec. 15, 2010, the day Terry died of wounds received the day before in a shootout 18 miles inside the US border, near Nogales.

The deputy, Monty Wilkinson, responded: “Tragic. I’ve alerted the AG.”

Burke, an anti-gun fanatic whose appointment as US attorney in 2009 roughly coincided with the start of F&F, goes on to tell Wilkinson later that day: “The guns found in the desert near the murder of the BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

That’s right. The government’s top law-enforcement officer has been turning a blind eye to a cancer in his department for more than a year.

During a visit to Solyndra’s Fremont, CA, headquarters President Barack Obama infamously proclaimed “we can see the positive impacts [of Recovery Act stimulus money] right here at Solyndra.”  A year later, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy.  Less noticed was Vice President Joe Biden’s equally presumptuous statement last year that Indiana-based EnerDel – a maker of government subsidized batteries for electric cars – was the “start” to reorienting “the way Americans power their lives.”   As of yesterday, exactly one year after Biden uttered those words, the latest green energy fiasco declared bankruptcy.

For those keeping score, that’s Solyndra costing $535 million, EnerDel $118 million, with more failures to follow.  Had enough, America?

My apologies for gorging on the disastrous impact of meddlesome food czars, but the news is even worse than kids throwing away uneaten salads and smuggling in junk food to curb their hunger pangs.  According to the Federal Register, the Agricultural Department’s new calorie caps on federally subsidized breakfasts and lunches will hit local school districts with an additional $1.7 billion in mandated, uncompensated spending over the next five years.

The reason is twofold.  First, the new regulations require schools to spend money on higher priced foods like whole grains and fresh produce to stay below the calorie cap.  Second, the feds are only contributing an average funding increase of 6 cents per meal – an amount that falls far short of the estimated 10 cents increase for each lunch and 27 cents increase for each breakfast that will result from the new rules.  Thus, a $1.7 billion deficit gets passed onto cash-strapped school districts.

Whatever one thinks about the propriety of trying to force kids to eat healthier foods at school – and there are compelling reasons to consider some of the proposals – no can argue that yet another underfunded mandate is a serious long-term solution to this problem.

Today, the Department of Labor announced that the 2011 union membership rate fell to a new record low of 11.8%.   Disturbingly, the rate among public-sector workers now stands at 37%, whereas the membership rate for private-sector employees stands at a historic low of just 6.9%.

Now, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) chairman Mark Pearce has announced that Obama’s NLRB will push for new rules forcing employers to turn over lists of employees’ private phone numbers and email addresses in a shameless attempt to assist Big Labor in its desperate organizing activities.  After all, unless labor leaders can wrench more dollars from employees’ paychecks, they won’t have as much to spend on Obama’s reelection campaign.  Meanwhile, the government also announced today that the U.S. economy only grew a lackluster 2.8% in the fourth quarter of 2011.  That illustrates once again that Obama’s policies aren’t helping the economy, they’re subduing what should by now be a much sharper recovery.

As we have observed, if the Obama Administration behaves this thuggishly during an election year, just imagine how heedlessly it would behave during a second term when it needn’t worry about reelection.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Senik:  Five Laughable Moments from the State of the Union
Hillyer:  Puff! The Tragic Dragonless Leadership
Lee:  Obama’s IRS Return Shows His Tax Hypocrisy, Current Debate Shows Urgent Need for Corporate Tax Reform
Ellis:  L.A. Unified’s School Lunch Crusade Leaves Bad Taste for Kids, Taxpayers

Video:  The Pipeline to Nowhere
Podcast:  Fox News Contributor Margaret Hoover Talks Politics
Jester’s Courtroom:  Lawsuit Overdose

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

In an interview with CFIF, political commentator and author Margaret Hoover discusses her book, American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party, and how the GOP can win back the millennials.

Listen to the interview here.